Thursday, March 27, 2014

John 8:1-11

This is one of my favorite Jesus stories: the story of the woman caught in adultery.
Jesus is confronted by a group of angry religious leaders, bringing with them a woman "caught in adultery." They ask Jesus whether the woman should be stoned, in accordance with the Law. Jesus chooses to reply by squatting down and writing in the dust. What he writes is not specified. But when he is pressed for a verbal answer, he replied that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone. The crowd wanders away until only Jesus and the woman are left.
It's a strange situation. The woman was caught in the act of adultery, which means that there was a man involved. And yet he is not brought before Jesus, even though the specific law in question demands that both man and woman be stoned. What does this mean? It really can mean only one thing: the man committing adultery was given a free pass by the enforcers. I strongly suspect that they planned the whole thing with him - he put the 1st century equivalent of a tie on his doorknob when he and his girlfriend got busy, enabling them to "catch" them in the act. But if he didn't, and they somehow accidentally caught him, he was obviously powerful enough to escape their wrath. They didn't want to stone him, just the woman. The woman was disposable, the man was not.

Throughout history, women have borne the burden of all illicit sex. Giving men birth control is good policy; giving women birth control is destruction of the family unit. Covering Viagra is not even questioned, but covering birth control is a violation of religious freedom, despite the fact that Viagra only serves to enable sex, while birth control offers health benefits beyond the prevention of pregnancy.

It's time that men took responsibility for their own sexuality.

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